Another Ramble

Now that I have time to finally blog again, it seems I have an overwhelming desire to tell y'all about what I've been doing with this time. Besides sitting in front of a computer in a dark hotel room, I mean.

The past couple days have been pretty interesting. Not as relaxing as my time in Pass-A-Grille, but good, nonetheless. Two days ago, my family drove from Homestead, Florida to Key West and back. On our way, we stopped on Key Largo and went snorkeling. It was really fun, though there was this one barracuda that kept stalking me. Or at least, it felt like that. After snorkeling, we started off toward Key West again, but hunger made us stop at this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had been advertising its "World Famous Fish Sandwichs" for several miles. Well, I'd never heard of the sandwich before, but I should have.

It contained generous portions of lightly breaded dolphin fish with cheddar cheese, tartar sauce, and tomatoes on top of toasted whole wheat bread. Mmmm. Delicious.

So anyways, we get to Key West and go to Hemingway's Home. His house is gorgeous, but honestly, the main draw for me was all the cats running around. If you didn't know before, Hemingway owned two cats, of which at least one had a common genetic mutation giving it six toes instead of five. Well, in his will, Hemingway provided for the care of his cats, and generations later, there are lots of his cats descendants running loose on the property. They're quite tame, and generally enjoy being petted. But the greatest thing is that the majority of them also have six toes. It's pretty cool.

Yesterday my family went to the Everglades. We took a boat tour up into the backcountry in the mangrove swamps and along the way saw both the American Crocodile and aligators. That was neat, too. However, our time in the National Park was shortened both by the approaching thunderstorm and the numerous moskitoes determined to get at me despite the generous layer of DEET Mom had coated me with.

I've also fallen in love with the Anhinga , a fish-hunting bird  native to the Everglades. It is absolutely beautiful, and I highly recommend looking up pictures of it online.

Today we visited St. Augustine, the oldest city in the US. It was established in 1595 by the Spanish in northern Florida, who promptly built Castillo de San Marcos. Coincidentally, this castillo is still standing, preserved as a National Monument. One really interesting thing is that the fort has been used by Spanish, English, and United States forces, including, at one time, Confederate soldiers. It has stood in one place since it was first built by the Spanish, and you can see where the shell-stone has worn away on the steps into the moat. The middle of the steps are almost even with the top of the step previous to it. You can almost taste the history in the air.

So tonight, my family is heading in toward Savannah, Georgia as we start our way to Washington DC. Oh, I think I forgot to tell you! I'm going to be spending July 4th in the Capital! Words cannot adequately describe how excited I am.

However, since the car is about to head into a gigantic lighting storm and gullywasher, I think I shall leave my comments on my tourism at that. Except to say that I'm marvellously tan.

B